• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Share your most disappointing nostalgia trip/trips

regawdless

Banned
Nostalgia is a great thing. That warm feeling of joy and amazing memories from the past. A time when obviously everything was better.

So oftentimes, we go back to relive those memories, play these old games or enjoy the rare remakes. It can be a lot of fun to walk down memory lane.

Not always though. It can also be a frustrating and disappointing experience.

What have been your most disappointing nostalgia trips?

My current example:
Outcast - Second Contact

Man did I love the original back in 1999. The world, the voxels, the atmosphere, the water....

outcast.jpg


The remake was available for around 5 bucks on Steam, so I jumped in. Ready to re-experience the game with the improved visuals. And yes, 4k 60fps with reshade, it looks good!

Then I started to really play it. Way, way too much idiotic dialogue. Quests that go like "Find person x, but we don't know where he is, so find his brother x first." Totally awful feeling shooting and stiff controls. Laughable writing and voice recordings. It's just not fun to play for me.

Disappointed Kevin Sorbo GIF


I'll give it one more chance in the next weeks, to at least go further and see more of the world. I'd love to just cheat and get all the weapons so I could rush through. But can't find anything.
 

JimmyRustler

Gold Member
Most recently probably Dark Could.

Had extremely good memory of it and then when I started replaying it again on the PS4 emulated version... Game was a fucking drag and the difficulty curve was insane. Ended up used the broken dagger glitch.

On 2nd thought though... Probably only had such a good memory of it because I originally only played the first two areas and the game only goes off the cliff after that.
 
Last edited:

Max_Po

Banned
C R I N G E .. picked up an Analogue NT Noir... it cost me 840 CDN after US to CDN, CC Fees for conversion ... expensive shipping and duty charges....

ONLY used ones... I hope in near future I can sell it and recover my investment. ...

On the other hand, I am loving Mega SG and SuperNT ...
 

regawdless

Banned
I was so happy when they announced Second Contact but after i watched some reviews i figured it is better to let the original stay in my memory with positive thoughts and not play the remake.

Definitely the right decision.

I though about rushing through in god mode, but that first weapon, combined with the shitty controls - it's not fun.

At least it looks somewhat nice.
 

GrayFoxPL

Member
C R I N G E .. picked up an Analogue NT Noir... it cost me 840 CDN after US to CDN, CC Fees for conversion ... expensive shipping and duty charges....

ONLY used ones... I hope in near future I can sell it and recover my investment. ...

On the other hand, I am loving Mega SG and SuperNT ...
You didn't say what's wrong with it.
 

Con-Z-epT

Live from NeoGAF, it's Friday Night!
Definitely the right decision.

I though about rushing through in god mode, but that first weapon, combined with the shitty controls - it's not fun.

At least it looks somewhat nice.
It's a real shame.

It really draws you in with it's visuals since now the game looks like i remembered it when i was younger.
 

Winter John

Gold Member
Brink, definitely Goddam fucking Brink. I don't know what it was but I was real hyped for that game. I thought it was going to be the tits. The first warning sign, and the one I should've listened to, was the guy at the store shaking his head when I took my copy up to the counter. He told me it was a mess but I went on anyway. It took a week to get online but the game was some broke ass shit. I noticed it was on GamePass so I fired it up but couldn't get a match. I guess it's still broke
 
.hack GU Trilogy, i mean the gameplay was always shallow but man the years hasn't been kind, i still love these games and their charm is still there but i needed to pace myself through it.

Come to think of it CyberConnect2 never made a game with compeling gameplay ever, they've always focused on the visual side of things and now are doomed to do licenced stuff which is a huge shame, i wish they'd revist the franchise and evolve their carft and gameplay chops.
 

MayauMiao

Member
D's Diner. I really thought the graphic was real time and the horror of the game really stuck with me.

It looks laughably bad now and worse with barely any gameplay.
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
Zelda: Minish Cap

Had the best memories of playing it when it first released on the GBA. Got it on the WiiU last year, I still enjoyed it but not anywhere near as much and I'll probably never play it again because it's just kind of a chore with the kin stone mechanics.

That was quite disappointing.
 
Most recently probably Dark Could.

Had extremely good memory of it and then when I started replaying it again on the PS4 emulated version... Game was a fucking drag and the difficulty curve was insane. Ended up used the broken dagger glitch.

On 2nd thought though... Probably only had such a good memory of it because I originally only played the first two areas and the game only goes off the cliff after that.
That's odd. Usually, if I play a popular game for the first time long after its initial release, I'm disappointed. But, I played Dark Cloud for the first time on PS4, and really enjoyed it.
 
Back in the day I wanted a game boy advance, but my Dad decided to get me a GameGear instead because it was cheap (because it was a dead system). I only had one game on it Sonic Chaos. I never got to finish it though because the damn GameGear couldn’t stay alive for more than 15 mins.

Much later it was released on the Wii Virtual Console and I was pretty syched to play it again. But it sucked. I couldn’t even play it for 10 minutes.
 

Kuranghi

Member
I picked up Ace Combat 7 in a sale because I fondly remember the series from the PS1 days.

Oh boy. Mission repetition would be an understatement.

I'm confused by this opinion, I thought it had good variety 🤷‍♂️ but I haven't played many of them tbf.

You had flavour missions, dogfighting missions, bombing missions, a "stealth" mission :messenger_tears_of_joy: , protect NPC missions and occasional bosses. I really liked replaying the missions with different setups/planes, which totally changed how you played them/engaged in fights.

What variety did the others have you didn't get here?
 
Last edited:

cireza

Banned
Recently replayed Twilight Princess, but it is really difficult to tolerate the extremely slow pacing of everything. This is what irritates me the most about old games, everything takes ages.

Also replayed Grandia on Saturn, man the loadings are all over the place. It takes ages to start a battle, you have to watch all these stupid spell animations, then go through two screens for items and experience and another loading to get back to the map. It never ends.

Also on these old consoles, we often forget that games had technical issues. I was recently replaying Symphony of the Night on Saturn, and the game has a lot of slowdowns as well as irritating loadings for the menu and map.

A lot of the games are still perfectly fine and awesome though.
 

stranno

Member
Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire was my first Playstation game. It blowed me away coming from Super Nintendo back in the day. It has aged badly.. to say the least.
 

MadPanda

Banned
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

I remember back in the day how hyped I was, how popular the game was, and how everyone praised it. I played it for so long. I remember many missions from it.

So I guessed I'll enjoy that remake they made with Infinite Warfare. Oh boy, how wrong was I. Even with that remake it didn't age well. Controls, movements, AI etc was so archaic.

It made me sad as I wanted to relieve those missions. I'm playing modern warfare 2 remake now and it's much better as it's remade in MW engine. If only they did the same for cod4 :(
 

T-Cake

Member
The second game I played on my brand new Xbox Series S was Battlefield Bad Company. I had not played this since it first came out on Xbox 360 in 2008.

Oh man, it was a bit of a disappointment. The controls are clunky - having to continually hold down the left thumb stick to run is almost impossible. There was film grain all over the place. Visuals at 720p I can tolerate but this seemed even lower with aliasing.

I was actually glad to finish it but I doubt I'll ever play it again unless it got a 4K boost with Microsoft's trickery.
 

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

I remember back in the day how hyped I was, how popular the game was, and how everyone praised it. I played it for so long. I remember many missions from it.

So I guessed I'll enjoy that remake they made with Infinite Warfare. Oh boy, how wrong was I. Even with that remake it didn't age well. Controls, movements, AI etc was so archaic.

It made me sad as I wanted to relieve those missions. I'm playing modern warfare 2 remake now and it's much better as it's remade in MW engine. If only they did the same for cod4 :(

Same here. It came bundled with a PS3 Slim, so it was my first PS3 game, my first game of that generation in fact. I remember loving it, chatting about it online, investing hours upon hours into the multiplayer with friends. So when I saw the remake I thought alright, I'd love to revisit that with modern hardware and updates, etc.

Shocked at how poorly it aged. I couldn't believe it ever gripped me the way it had. I made it perhaps halfway through before losing interest.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Is this Crash Bandicoot the thread? All of those games clearly suck.
Strangely enough, I re-evaluated 1 very positively while playing the remasters, while 2 made me want to punch baby seals and I quit 3 before finishing it.


Mario Kart 64. What a slug that is now.
Always has been. Even worse if you had the PAL version. The only thing that kept that game afloat in people’s memories is that one multiplayer arena. As a racing game, MK64 always, always sucked.

I remember being very disappointed when I replayed Conker’s Bad Fur Day on the N64. The game’s all about repetition.
 

Orta

Banned
Played the fantastic Ridge Racer 7 for the first time a few weeks ago and got nostalgic for the earlier entries. Tried two of the best, the original and best of them all, R4.

Lets just say time hasn't been kind, certainly in comparison to the aforementioned RR7 and its modern tech/mechanics. Understandable of course but still a shame.
 
Pasting my recent experience with Symphony of the Night from elsewhere:

I went to play this again for the first time in 20 years or so. I've previously ranked SotN high among my favorite games but... I don't think I can stick to that anymore. I feel like the main issue is the lack of interesting abilites, at least during the first sections of the game. Can't remember whether it gets better later on. Anyway, as a result a lot of your time is spent just running/dashing and slashing through the same areas. This is the case in most Igavanias, but in the sequels you would get a plethora of abilities to experiment with which would stop things from getting too repetitive.

I also feel like the castle design isn't the best. There are plenty of long corridors without good shortcuts and just a few warp points which makes backtracking more frustrating than in other metroidvanias.

There's also the fact that exploring new areas is one of the main strengths of SotN. While I don't remember details, I do remember the general layout and look of the castle which does make it less exciting than the first time around.

So what does hold up? The controls are still among the most precise and satisfying in any 2D game. Alucard is still impressively well animated and the game looks great in general. The music is good. And exploring new areas and enemies is still fun.

I've explored about 70% of the castle and while I might go back later on, I feel like I'm done playing this for the moment. Playing Bloodstained was decisively a more enjoyable experience for me.
 

Garnox

Member
A little different scenario as its nostalgic in the way of being a childhood memory, but Doom Troopers.

My brother and I recall seeing it in a Electronics Boutique and wanted to get it because the cover looked cool and we heard it was super violent and gory!

Mother wasn't having any of it and didn't allow us to get it.

Fast-forward 25 years later, my brother and I finally sit down to play it together (emulator) and we are just recalling how long its taken us to finally play this game and we joked that mom can't stop us anymore (she passed away years back, some coping humor).

We fired it up...and boy was it awful. 🤣
 
Top Bottom